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AbstractWe offer evidence that public sector corruption has an inverse association with evaluations of performance at both the local and central government levels. Consistent with ex ante expectations, perceptions of corruption among local government officials are directly and negatively related to performance evaluations at the local government level and relatively less so at the central government level. Conversely, perceptions of corruption among overall government officials have a stronger negative association with performance evaluations of central governments relative to performance evaluations of local governments. These results confirm that individual evaluations of public sector corruption affect perceived government performance evaluations, with local–local, local–central, central–local, and central–central level variances. Regressions by country groups—such as European Union membership, or geographic clusters, such as Southeastern Balkan or the former Soviet Union states—continue to support the core findings with one caveat. Results from two‐level random intercepts and slopes regression models show that the negative association between perceived corruption and government performance evaluation is weaker in contexts with relatively higher levels of public corruption.

The study examines "through‐the‐cycle" stability of S&P and Moody's state credit ratings to national and state level business cycles during 1977–2010. Additionally, the study evaluates the associations between economic concentration and credit quality in a long panel of state credit ratings. The findings suggest that, with other temporal effects held constant, the ratings of S&P and Moody's are not procyclical and are robust to ups and downs in national or state‐specific business cycles. Economic concentration is inversely associated with state credit quality and remains significant for the period of an average business cycle, controlling for national and state economic expansions and contractions.

This study examines whether the various leadership roles undertaken by public sector managers have an important association with subordinates' levels of affective commitment to the organization. Our empirical findings suggest that not all leadership practices matter. It appears that only relations‐oriented and change‐oriented leadership, and to a far lesser extent integrity‐oriented leadership, have a substantive association with affective organizational commitment. Task‐oriented leadership and, to a large degree, integrity‐oriented leadership, are found not to matter much for employees with lower levels of affective commitment, but they look to strengthen fondness of the organization among those with already high levels of affective commitment. Results also suggest that the diversity‐oriented leadership role has no association with affective commitment to the organization.

This research explores the intensity of the relationship between municipal advisors and underwriters, as well as their quality and location, to assess the resulting impact on borrowing costs for negotiated debt. The findings from this research have practical policy implications related to the proper composition of a local government's debt financing team. In addition, the empirical findings shed light on central aspects in debt management networks as determined by the round‐trip transaction (RTT) theory, which point at new levers that subnational policy makers may use to gain efficiencies when accessing the municipal debt market.

Unfunded public pension obligations represent a great challenge for policy makers in the American states. We posit that a part of pension underfunding relates to the level of public corruption. Empirical findings in the article show that funding ratios in public pension funds are inversely related to the incidence levels of corruption in the state, with other fiscal, political, and institutional covariates held constant. We show that this can happen through higher pension benefits, lower actuarially required contributions (ARCs), lower percentage of actual ARC contributions, and poorer investment outcomes. Based on empirical estimates, we find that a reduction of corruption by one standard deviation around the mean would permit the states to save on pension benefits by 10.24% annually (or US$1,894.64 per recipient), increase required ARC by 4.40%, increase actual ARC contributions by 8.46%, and improve investment returns by 4.72%. Therefore, policies to reduce public-sector corruption, or to improve the insulation of pension funds in relatively more corrupt environments, can make a significant contribution toward tackling the public pension underfunding crisis in the American states.